Sound??

Rahsaan Roland Kirk, oil on canvas, 10x20"

Some of Dick Fontaine's recordings of Rahsaan Roland Kirk for his film Sound?? belong to my favorite tidbits I know of him. Partly because it comes with visuals, it's a film alright, Kirk seems to embody the spirit of the freedom of sound, where the film is about. The film is based on ideas of John Cage, and Cage himself narrates the film, but Cage himself is not able to liberate "sound" yet (in the movie at least,) and leaves it to Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Cage is as a narrator not the person you want to listen to, to become enlightened by new ideas about music. Cage, as a narrator, is one I skip over to get to the good parts in the movie, which belong to Kirk. Similarly, when Cage appears on a record with Sun Ra, another great visionary of free jazz, it is the side with Cage that remains in mint condition, whereas the Sun Ra side is worn down. John Cage is not a fan of recorded music, as music ought to be experienced as a time-piece, but even recordings are unique in the moment; an owl hooting from outside, a scratch on the record, another music recording coming from the room next-door, a different mood, all these random chance events add to the listening experience of the record, or film. When Cage exclaims: "Why don't they just shut up" in Sound??, I feel like he's talking to himself, talking over the "sounds" of Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
 

Renaissance

Konstantin Simonovitch/Abbé Jean Revert

A friend asked me if my trip to Florence, Italy had an immediate impact on my painting practice. The influence will only be felt next year, when a number of tunes from records I bought in Florence will be listed in, and painted for, the Top 100 2023. I'm still working on the Top 100 2022, even though I had it nearly finished before I left for Florence a month ago. I had not been in Florence before, and of course, seeing these works that I've known for years from books for real did make an impact. No surprise here: portraiture is my favorite subject matter of the old masters. In portraiture, especially, the real makes a difference compared with a reproduction. The portrait of Savonarola by Fra Bartolomeo did not disappoint, portraits by Titian were to me a great revelation, but to say that I now want to paint like them, no. I have seen a hundred and fifty years of photography history, and I have seen Warhol, Orlan, and Lucian Freud. If any technical matter influenced me it's from an analysis of painting in the Renaissance in a book I've read before flying over; the use of complementary colors as a ground before applying the final color. I kind of knew about but never experimented with it, until the above painting relating to music by Iannis Xenakis. The painting clearly does not have a finished look but I decided it had to be this way. Konstantin Simonovitch and Abbé Jean Revert direct the orchestra and choir respectively on a recording of Polla ta Dhina, a composition by Iannis Xenakis. Simonovitch, further more, directs the Ensemble Instrumental De Musique Contemporaine on Akrata, another Top 100 entry from the same album as Polla ta Dhina. The Simonovitch/Revert painting was the first one I painted since returning from Florence, but I also finished one of the Kirk family illustrating yet another Rahsaan Roland Kirk tune in the list of 100 recordings compiled in 2022. Dothaan Kirk was Roland Kirk's wife, Rory, their son, and Alena a granddaughter.

Rory, Alena, and Dorthaan Kirk

 

Token Dutch Music Personality; Happy New Year

Annette Apon/Louis Andriessen

Because of the time difference New Year in the Netherlands is six hours earlier than here in Florida. It means that the time leading up to tonight's midnight hour comes sooner for someone who was born at the same time and at the same place than for me. I often go back to the Netherlands and this year I went back a lot. Every visit to the Netherlands comes with a shopping extravaganza at record stores. Vinylarchief in Nijmegen is my favorite place to go shopping. This time around, at the Vinylarchief, I browsed through a section labeled "Dutch Avant-Garde" (yes, there is such a thing.) I selected a handful of records from that section but ended up buying only two. One I did misidentify (by remembering a different first name) and, even though it was quite good, I left it behind because it dissatisfied my expectations. The other one I took with me, and I did find that one quite beautiful, Golven (Waves,) soundtrack to a film by Annette Apon by Louis Andriessen. Some musicians on the record were part of the Willem Breuker Kollektief, last year's token Dutch musician, and the record belongs the one of the most played vinyl on my player this past year. There are quite a few tunes from films in this year's list. Music, to me, seems to make a greater impression when it's accompanied by visuals. Golven doesn't belong in this category because I never seen the film. Sound!!! on the other hand, is a on a repeated watching loop on my computer. The film by Dick Fontaine, features the music of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and is narrated by John Cage. Cage himself is not in the Top 100 this year but is associated with a handful of recordings as is elaborated in this post from a few months ago.

Dick Fontaine/Rahsaan Roland Kirk

There are still a number of paintings that are finished but not discussed yet. I'll forward one more and wait till next year for the others. I set myself the goal of getting half way with the Top 100 paintings and that's precisely where I'm at right now. The last painting I share here then is a double portrait of the Italian (Sicilian) singer Rosa Balistreri and the Portuguese singer Amalia Rodrigues. The two were friends. Balistreri is the in Top 100 with a song called Mirrina, while Rodrigues almost made it in this year after I was given two wonderful live records of hers. I have now eight records of Amalia Rodrigues, I had yet to make a painting. Both Balistreri (d. 1990) and Rodrigues (d. 1999) are (were) heroes of their respected communities, and both championed a communist/socialist cause.

Rosa Balistreri/Amalia Rodrigues

 

Sounds and Visions

One of fon's (Dafut king) wives/Pat Ritzenthaler

Music of the Cameroons [Folkways, 1961]was recorded by Robert and Pat Ritzenthaler in western British Cameroon in 1959. I assume that the more intimate domestic recordings of women and children were made by Pat Ritzenthaler and the men's ceremonial music by her husband Robert. The advantage of a husband and wife team of ethnomusicologists is that there is access to men only as well as women only quarters. It allows me to mix up the genders of the people I portray (it's been a stag fest lately.) The song in the top 100 is called Hail Muma and was performed by children and wives of the brother of the king (fon.) Muma is the brother of fon and the second in command in the Dafut society. I don't know how many wives Muma has but the liner notes tell of 41 wives of fon and over a hundred children. Hail Muma is an improvised song under the influence of palm wine to honor the fon's brother.

Martin Cradick/Bounaka

The British musician Martin Cradick is known for the fusion of world music and western rock and jazz. He founded the band Outback that featured several didjeridu players. His best known fusion is that of western and Baka (pygmy) people of Cameroon in a mixed orchestra he called Baka Beyond. The group featured his wife Su Hart as well as a host of Baka musicians he had recorded in the field on an earlier occasion (1992) including the m'gongo player Bounaka pictured above. On the solo m'gongo performance called Venlouma that Cradick recorded in 1992 Bounaka places his instrument on a cooking pop as a resonator. It appeared on the very successful Heart of the Forest cd from 1993.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk/Dick Fontaine

The song Three for the Festival is almost a customary feature of a Top 100 (I missed last year) and especially the version from the film Sound!! by Dick Fontaine (and narrated by John Cage) is a long time favorite of mine. (There are many version on line and in my own music collection.) I assume it was Dick Fontaine who filmed Kirk in performance for this film. Sound!! is from 1967.


 

Jazz in the Top 100 2018/2019

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

John Coltrane
14 x 11 inches, oil on canvas, 2019

There's jazz in the Top 100 2018/2019. Perhaps not quite as many as is usual but it's better than how the blues fared; there are none belonging to the latter category. (It's a first, that there's no blues. I like blues a lot, especially prewar blues, but perhaps it becomes harder to discover new old gems. There were only so many recordings made, I may have heard a good portion of it. Nevertheless I'm going to make sure blues will be back next year.) There's the same Don Cherry/Krzysztof Penderecki piece featured the previous year, there's a Sun Ra All Starts recording, and also a place for the two regulars in the Top 100: John Coltrane and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. The Coltrane recording is the same as it has been the last two decades: that recording of My Favorite Things that is my favorite track throughout the history of the Top 100. To read about this tune more you can follow this link. The Kirk recording, however, is one that was not previously featured: Theme for the Eulipians. I first heard the tune as an instrumental through a performance together with Gil Evans. A marvelous performance late in Kirk's life. He had already suffered a stroke and could only play with one hand. Still a virtuoso. The song, as it is a song, appears on The Return of the 5000 Lb. Man and is written by Kirk together with Betty Neals, who wrote the lyrics. Neals is also heard on the recording reciting these lyrics and Maeretha Stewart sings. The musicians, besides Kirk: Howard Johnson, Romeo Penque, Hilton Ruiz, Buster Williams, Charlie Persip, and Joe Habao Texidor, The album was recorded in 1976 (the same year as the Gil Evans concert) and released by Warner Brothers.

Kirk

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
9.5 x 4.5 inches, oil on wood, 2018

The third painting of Rahsaan Roland Kirk for the Top 100 2017/18 represents his 1968 classic The Inflated Tear. The tune was a revelation for May Cobb, who is currently finishing a book about "the late, great, multi-instrumentalist." She heard The Inflated tear first in a college class on jazz history. May Cobb and I have been occasionally writing to each other about Kirk. Here's she in her own words (as published in The Rumpus): "The Inflated Tear sounded like the entire spectrum of the history of African-American music rolled into one four-minute song: old slavery spirituals, work songs, field hollers, soul, modern jazz, and early blues. It was like a Duke Ellington reed section, yet more emotional, more intimate, with a sound that ached of centuries. It was like listening to the inside of someone’s heart."

Rahsaan

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
12 x 9 inches, oil on canvas, 2018

 The second Kirk painting within a month illustrating the second track from the film Sound?? If the previous painting belonged to Three for the Festival this one then must belong to Here Comes the Whistleman. One of his whistles hangs on his chest, the flute on his back. While announcing the track in the movie (as Blues in W) he thrown a bunch of plastic flutes in the audience inviting them to blow along. The resulting cacophony is the backdrop for Kirk's flute solo and everything suddenly makes sense and all sounds in the room seem in perfect harmony.

Sound??

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
12.5 x 7 inches, oil on board, 2018

The focuses of the top 100 for months have been on the origin of music and that of shamanism. In this context the film Sound?? (Dick Fontaine, 1967, 25m) is especially insightful. Featured musicians in the film are Rahsaan Roland Kirk and John Cage. Cage is seen rehearsing with David Tudor and Merce Cunningham. Cage also narrates the film in which he asks existential questions about music and sound. "What is sound?" he asks and muses on the answer. Kirk is seen live in concert performing Three for the Festival and Here Comes the Whistleman. The pairing of the two is natural as Kirk illustrates the concepts of Cage. Cage was influenced by Zen Buddhism and the Chinese I Ching, the Book of Changes, Kirk, as I wrote a few years ago, the embodiment of a twentieth century western performer with characteristics of a shaman of the ancient tradition. The film is a great introduction to a deeper understanding of that thing called music where the whole world is so infatuated with.

Roland Kirk (Shaman?)

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
14" x 11", oil on wood, 2014

A wisdom encircled Rahsaan that had folks believing he had something greater to say, something supreme to impart each time he spoke. Part southern preacher, part stand-up comic, part ancient-prophet—Rahsaan’s voice boomed with authority with his words always aimed at delivering the most hard-hitting truths.

       

May Cobb, Songs of Our Life: Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “The Inflated Tear,” The Rumpus, 2013.

For the last two or three years I have been following the blog The Man Who Cried Fire, dedicated to the life and music of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and written and collected by Mary K. Cobb.  Kirk has been a mainstay in the Top 100s since 1999, and the more you hear and see of him, the more his place as one of the great artists’ of twentieth century music is cemented in the annals of the history of the world. I have considered Kirk a shaman, one who could traverse the mythical realms of the spirit world. As an artist and art historian I have been convinced that the true function of art is that what it was in the beginning: the intermediary of the gods. “One who is a specialist in ancient techniques of ecstacy.”

“The shaman normally is a functionary for a nonliterate community, serving as its healer, intermediary with the gods, guide of the souls of the dead to their rest, and custodian of traditional tribal lore. The typical shaman comes to this role through either heredity or having manifested idiosyncratic traits (epilepsy, sexual ambiguity, poetic sensitivity, dramatic dreams). Psychologically, shamans depend on an ability to function in two worlds, the ordinary reality of daily life and the extraordinary reality they encounter through their ecstatic journeys. As well, they serve their tribe as a defense of meaning, by incarnating a contact with the powers thought to hold the tribe's destiny.” (Carmody & Carmody 1989:33)

Andreas Lommel, in his work on shamanism (Shamanism: The Beginnings of Art), draws a distinction between a medicine person and a shaman, noting that the future shaman acts under an inner compulsion “...a psychosis that is emerging for some reason or other is so strong that the only way out open to the individual attacked by it is to escape from it into shamanistic activity, that is to say essentially by means of artistic productivity, such as dancing or singing, which always involves a state of trance.” (1967:9-10)

In Siberian Tungustic the word is "saman," meaning "one who is excited, moved, raised," and refers to individuals who, while in a trance state, visit the realm of mystical beings to communicate with them and in the process gain mystical power.

1941 saw the discovery of Paleolithic paintings in caves at Lascaux. At the time they were considered the oldest known paintings and, according to the French philosopher Georges Bataille, it represented the “birth of art.” Bataille was one of the first to see these paintings and he immediately saw in them something so profound that the whole of art history should be rewritten. 1941, of course, was during the second World War, and the dominating force of the avant-garde (what was left of it) then were the surrealists, with whom Bataille himself was briefly associated.

(Has the subject of this 17,000 year old painting been photographed in Siberia?)

Three for the Festival

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
16" x 12"
oil on canvas board, 2013

Another song (see previous post) that was also featured in the 100 Greatest Recordings Ever. Three for the Festival, together with Pedal Up, is one of a pair of Kirk recordings in The Greatest list as well as in the last three consecutive Top 100 lists. Three for the Festival is an early work of Kirk's from the album We Free Kings, he had not adopted the name Rahsaan yet but had changed his name Ronald to Roland. The tune continued to be on his repertoire as a showpiece for his trademark of playing three saxophones (as well as other instruments) at the same time. A score of live recordings can be seen on YouTube, one even more spectacular than the other. It's a classic great melody and composition, paired with Kirk's virtuoso.

KIRK

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
24" x 12"
oil on luan, 2012

Downbeat magazine "Poll Winners' Show" 1975, Rahsaan Roland Kirk is introduced by Quincy Jones as having won the award in the category of multi-instrumentalist and miscellaneous instruments. In the clarinet category he won for the 2nd consecutive year, the stritch and manzello he won for 14 consecutive years (these were instrument he devised himself), he won the flute too. As soon as Quincy Jones is done with the lauds, Kirk tears into a mesmerizing version of Pedal Up. Kirk plays multiple horns, McCoy Tyner is on piano, Stanley Clarke on bass, and Lenny White is the drummer on this track that reaches high into the Top 100 for the 3rd consecutive year. It doesn't get old this one. I have a version on the 2LP-set Bright Moments but I prefer the Downbeat version. It's great to see him perform even just on video as I never had the chance to see him perform live in concert. Ronald Theodore Kirk was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1935, he died in 1977.

The 100 Greatest Recordings Ever: 13, Roland Kirk

The Top 100 of 2011

Four ink drawings, 02-03-2012

 Berry van Boekel: Top 100 2011

Swing Space Gallery

1556 North High Street
Columbus, OH 43201
614.292.0234 (phone)


Monday, March 26–Thursday, April 12
Reception: Monday, March 26, 5­–8pm 

The four ink drawings I did tonight look like trading cards the way they're laid out. I think it would be so awesome to print all hundred as trading cards. I collected football (soccer) cards for many years so it would be right up my alley. The reasons for suddenly shifting from medium size canvases to ink drawings on paper are many:

•  They can be done rather quickly, given that I still need to paint 40 paintings to have exactly 100 come March 26, it keeps me from having deadline stress
• Commercial: drawings like these I will sell rather cheaply—I'd like earn a little bit of money at the Top 100 exhibition
• Convenience: I've been working construction full time in order to convert a garage into a studio, it is hard then to do the work of painting in the evening—drawings can be done at the dining room
• I felt like doing a few that are immediate, without the option to rework and rework and rework

The four musicians portrayed are all recent arrivals into the list of 100 songs. They have in common that they have English as their language, and they've all passed away.

Jim Carroll —one of those cult figures, really well known in the artsy circles, that I had never heard of. A poet and a post-punk-rocker he died on 9-11-2009. My fiend Jake is a big fan–I borrowed a couple of cds.

• King Stitt —another one of those, I only learned of him after he died. This happened just a few days ago. Winston Sparks aka King Stitt was a pioneer Jamaican DJ. Nicknamed the Ugly One for his disfigured facial features he is credited as one of the first performers of 'toasting', a sort of rapping, in the 1950s.
• Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-1977) —Pedal Up is a repeat from last year's 100 and the fourth Kirk tune in this year's. I have the song on his Bright Moments 2LPset but I prefer the live version performed at Down Beat in 1975.
• Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915-1973) —A short outtake of Up Above My Head featured in the wonderful French film Amélie. Her name was not credited at the end but I recognized (be it not immediately) the singer.

Rahsaan

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
20" x 16"
oil on canvas, 2011

The lions disappeared altogether from May's Rahsaan painting. But June came and the lion is back in the newest painting of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. It returned bigger and stronger and it plays the saxophone. Rahsaan looks on. Palm trees appear in a horizon that is vertical. A rainbow is black and white and Rahsaan said:  "I don't give a damn". God wanted there to be jazz, and Rahsaan played Three for the Festival. All in all it's a bad painting, the technique is lousy, too many ideas and none resolved, but I too say: "I don't give a damn". I just made a jazz painting.

Improvisation: not to reject any idea but to explore its possibilities.
"Heraldry is both a science and an art form". (Heraldic Dictionary)

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
20" x 9.75"
oil and pastel on canvas, 2011

The lion on his pants may have to move to the background, maybe one on the left and one on the right, but here's the first painting for the Top 100 2011, the first of four Kirks I intend to do over the next week or so. Now I think of it I believe one lion should be painted black and the other white. In the photo I painted from, two lions are embroidered on his shirt but I liked the shirt without lions when the painting progressed. Kind of a Star Trek outfit it turned out, an homage to Captain Kirk maybe?  

Does Your House Have Lions? is title of a Rahsaan disc and also the title of a blog on Kirk by May Cobb "dedicated to the enduring spirit that is Rahsaan Roland Kirk" as she puts it. She's working on Kirk's biography and in search of anecdotes about his life. If you know of any... please visit her site (do it anyway if you—and how can you not—have a warm heart for Rahsaan.)

One of the four Kirk tunes in the list so far is Many Blessings from The Inflated Tear. This painting then will be forever linked to that track. It a sweet title, a beautiful way to get a new series of 100 paintings on its way.

Bright Moments

Top 100 1999: #12 
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Rip Rig and Panic
8.6" x 8.8", ink on paper, 1999

I can hardly fathom it but a time of nearly two months has passed without any interest or enjoyment in listening to, and seeking out new music. Needless to say that in stead of my usual routine in the studio, I have not painted any material for the new music year yet. A bright moment in my dull musical universe has been the music of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Of the six tracks likely to feature in the new Top 100 2011, four are from the Ohio born jazz man. For weeks on end the only music I played were his The Inflated Tear and Bright Moments albums. All the other music I've heard in that spell seemed lackluster by comparison. It has been a joy to paint Kirk in the past and it's starting to itch now. I got a few canvases ready to go and tonight I'll find out what it's like to paint after such a long dry spell. Inspired by the music of Kirk and some of my own bright moments illustrating him (like the 12 year old ink drawing above) I'll get busy. Welcome aboard dear followers, here we go again!

 

Free Jazz!?

Rahsaan Roland Kirk
35" x 19"
oil on wood, 2010

When I think about 'jazz paintings' I cringe. I suddenly feel my gums recede and become aware of arthritis in my knuckles. You've seen 'em, everybody's seen 'em, I saw 'em too many times, those paintings, gestural, with swirly lines, smoking audiences, and negro female dancers with exaggerated buttocks. Those paintings made in an attempt to recreate the atmosphere of a jazz combo improvisation onto a canvas. I'm not calling any artist's names (not that I could think of one from the top of my head anyway, but there are many, professionals and amateurs) because I know as a matter of fact what it feels like to make those paintings (and I don't want to discard any type of painting for the type it is). For a moment the painter can identify with the spirituality caused by a crazy high note, the moment when a combo miraculously slips in and out of time in unison as if weightless, or the essence of the ancient sorcerer or shaman in higher contact with the animalistic creator of the universe. Commercially speaking the portraits of jazz musicians have been my most successful but I have been able, I think, to stay away from making the quintessential jazz painting. I have painted well over one hundred jazz musicians so far, none of them with the intention to mimic the spirit of a jazz performance, but with a focus on the human characteristics of a person or the formal composition of a musician figure in a spacial context. Until now! I never made a jazz painting as large as I did with this one of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. I never focused on a jazz cliche (such as the super large cheeks when blowing a horn) either; combine this with the for me uncharacteristic black primer on the surface as if it were a black velvet painting and there you have the ingredients of a 'jazz painting'. OMG, I made a "JAZZ PAINTING!"